The narcissist’s false reality and how he traps you in it

I have been reading a lot lately about projective identification. Projective identification is a term that comes from psychologist Melanie Klein and I believe that every person that has ever been enmeshed with a narcissist needs to understand it. Most of all, understanding projective identification is really important for those of us who were raised by narcissistic parents.

The narcissist’s world of projections

There was a moment quite recently, when I realised, that my childhood was not really defined by who I was as a child but what my mother projected onto me.

It made me realise that the narcissistic personality disorder is a condition far more severe than it is generally regarded to be.

The narcissist really does live in a false reality. People that inhabit this reality are not seen as individuals with their wants, needs and personalities but rather as some projection screens onto which the narcissist projects elements of his or her disowned shadow.

When you are in a relationship with a narcissist, it’s really never about you and who you are as a person. It’s entirely about the projection that the narcissist places onto you.

Whilst a schizophrenic might perceive psychological elements outside himself in the form of voices, hallucinations and outrageous delusions, the narcissist projects the same elements onto the people in his or her environment. His or her social environment is therefore pretty much a reflection of his or her disordered mind.

The worst thing is that narcissists have a way to force those in their social environment to absorb those projections and accept them as their identity. That’s what projective identification is about.

Projective identification – how the narcissist forces you to identify with his or her projection

If you are a child of a narcissist, especially a scapegoat child, I don’t think you can possible grow up without identifying with what the narcissist projects onto you. They are immensely forceful when it comes to making you comply with the urges of their disorder.

Here is how it works:

Let’s have a look at my mother. My mother has quite a bit of an alcohol problem. Once she starts drinking, she can’t stop and she becomes an epitome of the totally disgusting drunk woman that is an utter embarrassment.

As a narcissist she is generally unable to see and respect other people’s boundaries but this trait of hers becomes even more pronounced in the drunken state. She rants and rambles, has a need to dominate every conversation and be the centre of attention. She doesn’t see it as a problem to openly embarrass you. She uses this type behaviour to demonstrate her dominance, stomps all over your boundaries and generally treats you as some sort of an accessory to her performance. Eventually, she passes out and falls asleep with her head on a table.

I have hated my mother’s drunkenness ever since I can remember and on many occasions I would protest against her behaviour in a desperate attempt to protect my boundaries (I obviously knew nothing about boundaries at that time but trying to make her treat me with some sort of respect was essentially what I was trying to achieve).

But trying to make a narcissist treat you with respect does not work. They need to make you comply with their projection. So my mother would react to my attempts to stop her behaviour with a massive anger tantrum, yelling at me, telling me what a horrible brat I was and how do I dared talk back to her.

Do you see what is happening here?

My seriously drunk mother believes that in her universe, she is entitled to behave however she pleases. If I protest, she makes me feel like the one who is faulty and misbehaving. By doing that, she creates a belief in me that if I stand up for myself, if I speak up against abusive behaviour, I am wrong and I will be punished.

This pattern was obviously present in all sorts of situations, in which my disordered mother would force her projections onto me – I am faulty, I am the problem, I am difficult, I am a brat, I am misbehaving, I am avoiding her for no reason.

Since I am the child, I am the small dependent and helpless one, she clearly must be right. Even though I keep protesting, I somehow absorb the projection. This would make me vulnerable in the future. I would be vulnerable to absorb projections of all sorts of narcissists that would cross my path.

You can understand where this leads. By the time I was 30, I absorbed so much toxic projections of all sorts of narcissists that I would live in a constant state of self-doubt. Am I really this faulty mis-behaving person? They are treating me as such so there must be something about it, right?

How a narcissist makes others relate to you as their projection

In addition to their use of brutal psychological force to persuade you that you are the culprit where they are actually the one who should rethink their behaviour, the narcissists infect the entire social surroundings the two of you inhabit with their delusional reality. They make everyone believe that you are the person that they project onto you.

That obviously happens by the traditional means of a smear campaign and triangulation. They talk about you to others as if you were what they project onto you – difficult, weird, anti-social – you name it.

People who have no knowledge of the narcissistic personality disorder and how it manifests and who are generally on the lower level of their psychological development would take the words of the narcissist at their face value and never question the narcissist’s version of you. As a result they will relate to you as if you really were what the narcissist describes you to be (the projection).

You will hear stories about yourself that are seriously distorted with only the smallest grain of truth in them. In all those stories, you would feature as some sort of an unbalanced, pitiful, silly character that makes funny mistakes, misbehaves, struggles and so on.

It’s very difficult to protect yourself against this psychic invasion, especially in your childhood. However, your inner voice, your emotions would be constantly protesting against this treatment, which might lead to you acting out against the narcissist’s projection, which unfortunately only serves as a reinforcement of the narcissist’s version of reality. Now you are acting out. Now you are angry. No one cares that you a rightfully protesting against psychological rape.

You don’t feel you can be yourself, you feel that if you dare to be yourself, you will be punished and rejected

Being subjected to this sort of abusive treatment will make you seriously self-conscious. You will feel hated, faulty, you will constantly expect rejections, you will feel that if you allow yourself to be yourself, you will be either punished or rejected, which is exactly what the narcissistic parent is doing – he or she is refusing to engage with you as you and is replacing the concept of you with a projection, which he or she is brutally forcing you to absorb.

You will struggle to understand who you are and what you want – your wants and talents don’t matter. What matters is what your parent wants and expects from you.

You will learn to supress yourself.

You will very likely find yourself in situations and relationships in your life where you will not be treated as you but as a projection.

Once you start healing and recovering your sense of self, you will notice that you feel off in the company of certain people. Somehow irritated.

Your natural tendency would be to blame yourself, thinking that perhaps you are not open enough, that you are socially awkward, yourself projecting something onto them.

The truth might, however, be, that this group of people is treating you as a projection. They don’t see you as you but as a figment of their imagination.

I have been in this situation many times. Frequently, people who are way below my intellectual level would treat me as if I am in some way below them. I am this naïve little girl or something (add to this that I have always looked quite a bit younger than my actual years and my baby face certainly did not reflect my life experiences and you get where it all comes from).

You will be noticing a stark difference between how you feel in the company of people who see you and those who project onto you. There is always this heavy feeling – your soul protesting against you carrying the projection.

How to break through absorbing other people’s projections

It took me quite a long time to finally see through this. I would get into discussions with narcissists online, in which they would be accusing me of things they were doing – attacking me, being passive aggressive, being judgemental. It’s a crazy world.

Sometimes, I would virtually feel the force of the projection suffocating me like an avalanche. Am I really doing this? Am I really this person they are accusing me of being?

The answer is no – I am only a magnet for narcissists’ projections.

It’s draining and it’s tiring. So how to defend yourself against this?

I feel that it really requires quite a lot of on-going work on your sense of self away from the narcissist-dominated circles. Since you have been trained to question yourself from the earliest age, it’s kind of your nature to allow others to treat you as a screen for their projections.

Really work on your understanding of yourself – who are you? What do you stand for? What do you value yourself for? How do your friends see you?

If your friends generally think that you are strong, awesome, wise and inspirational and someone else thinks you are silly and unstable, you kind of get the idea what’s going on.

I generally think that for people like us, psychotherapy is a very helpful and pleasurable experience. You get validation. You know, the therapist is not there to maintain your delusions. So if they are telling you that you are correct to feel a certain way and should not feel guilty for standing up for yourself, you get the idea that in the problematic relationship dynamic it’s probably not you who is the cause of the problem.

If you are confronted with someone who treats you as a projection, I feel that instead of trying to explain yourself and make them see, you should just very calmly tell them: “I am sorry that you see me this way. I don’t think you are right but I don’t think there is any point in continuing our conversation.”

Remember, you are dealing with someone who is either seriously mentally deranged or with someone who has been brainwashed and is under the spell of the deranged person.

Both of them live in a false reality.

They are not talking to you, they are talking to their projection

Anyway. Since absorbing narcissist’s projections has been such a profound experience in my life, I have spent quite a lot of time thinking about all this.

I have arrived at the conclusion that the narcissistic personality disorder is a much more serious mental health problem than people want to believe.

Narcissists live in false realities that are based on their projections. They don’t see people as who they really are and they are quite brutal in the way they force others to accept their projections.

There is absolutely no need to take anything a narcissist says personally – they are not talking to you. They are talking to their projection and that has absolutely nothing to do with you.

When it comes to people who are under the narcissist’s influence, I feel that we really should let them learn their lessons at their own time. It’s sad to live in someone else’s deranged reality and quite frankly, you are probably a much bigger loss for these people than the narcissist. The only problem is that they don’t see that and they made their choice.

In this video I talk about how to understand and control your emotional reactivity when dealing with a narcissist:

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Published by terezapultarova

London-based science and technology journalist, writer, video producer, health and psychology blogger, Czech voice-over artist, English - Czech translator and transcreator. I have a bachelor's degree in journalism from Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic, master's in cultural anthropology also from Charles University and another master's in science from the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.
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10 thoughts on “The narcissist’s false reality and how he traps you in it”

I have been dealing with my brother for five years and now that he knows I have caught on to him and see thru his lies he h.g.h as been very quiet—–i am almost nervous because I am waiting for something to happen. I just don’t know what

Wow. Your blog has helped me to see so much and this one is eye opening…just this morning I was remembering an evening with my ex where he became extremely intoxicated over dinner and began to regale me with a story of a day that he had spent with his ex girlfriend in the mountains at a time he had discarded me and before he had hoovered me back up. It was a brutally painful time for me and I couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell me because he was so impaired or why he would want to tell me about the beautiful experience that they had that day. He became irate and then pouty and indignant. I tried to get him to go to sleep but he refused and sat staring catatonically at the wall. I woke up 3 hours later to the sound of smashing glass and found him covered in his own blood – he had fallen on a hurricane lamp and really hurt himself badly. I nursed his wounds, soaked his stained clothing and put him to bed. I left after not sleeping for the rest of the evening and when he called me the next day he demanded to know what I had done to him. When he remembered as I relayed what had happened he told me it was my fault because I hadn’t forced him to go to bed when I did. Sigh… I didnt know how to explain that experience to myself other than it was very hurtful, as were so many of my experiences with him. Thank you for giving it a name. Understanding the projections and recognizing them for what they were and are feels freeing in itself. I will learn more.

Thank you for your comment Rhonda 🙂 I am glad if what I have to say help people make sense out of all that. It sounds you have been through quite a something 😦 I hope you are doing well and hopefully it all soon will be in the past. The narc experience is a real facilitation of some profound learning and growing.

I’m finding now that it is. The first year of recovery was just surviving and finding my footing again but I have been pushed back recently towards repair of myself and my past that brought me into the place of susceptibility to him. Again, finding your blog has been extremely validating but has also compelled me to look deeper than the experiences I had with him. Your stories are so recognizable. I hope that in your service to others that you are finding balance between your healthy future and memories of your unhappy past. I know I can’t stay in the latter for long periods without feeling stuck in that mud. I hope you are taking care of yourself. Thank you again.

yeah, you are right – the balance between the future and the past is delicate. I feel that by excavating it, I am removing it from myself. I also realised that this will always be a part of me, part of my story, part of what made me what I am today. Also, I have learned so much about these unhealthy dynamics, I am now reaching the stage when I find it simply fascinating how these toxic relationships work, the subtle mind-control – it’s fascinating once you get beyond the personal pain. But I think we need to own and accept the pain to be able to get beyond. Anyway, it’s hugely encouraging for me that you find my blog helpful 🙂

Growing up with a mother and sister with Narcissistic Personality Disorder has led me to the conclusion that NPD…. IS MUCH MORE SERIOUS THAN IT’S MADE OUT TO BE. You grow up in a surreal reality, their reality, and you’re only a child. Defenseless. My mother brutalized us and my sister had four children and she brutalized them. Now her kids are having children and the NPD is being carried on to the next generation. My mother is covert and my sister is overt, vicious delusional psychopaths completely out of touch with reality. They both blame their abuse OF their children, ON their children, the “ungrateful brats.”

This article on Projective Identification was really informative and helpful. The sad thing is I realize my mother grew up under the thumb of NPDs and why she has always been the cruel monster that she is. My sister is absolutely terrifying, her need to control and dominate. She’s left a trail through three states of people that want NOTHING to do with her. I’ve cut all contact with her and don’t expect to ever talk to her again.

My mother is 95 now, still vicious and projecting. No one wants anything to do with her. A cruel, lonely, loveless woman. But she went into one of her narc rages at the hospital and was FINALLY diagnosed with what she has suffered from her whole life, and we suffered from. The psychiatrists said the mask is slipping.

Our house, our family, I call it, The House of Hate and Loathing, because that’s what those houses are. Everyone pitted against one another, dancing around the narcissist’s Drama, and absorbing their cruel projections. They are horrible, horrible creatures, spreading hate and misery wherever they go. In my view they were spawned by the devil and will just go back to where they came from. I’ve tried to understand our “family” my whole life and the Projective ID article was really helpful.

Thank you for your comment. I am glad that my article helped. Yes, you are right, this toxicity usually carries on from one generation to the other. We seem to be the first generation to be able to break through that. A tough job to do… I hope you are doing well…

I so appreciate you sharing your experience and insight in your text and videos. It amazes me how universal the experience of narcissistic abuse is and how they have similar behaviors even though each one is a unique individual.

I think you are brave to be willing to talk about these things. You helped me understand my unique triggers, and I was able to sense with more awareness where I need healing.

You also gave me more tools to use if — goddess forbid — I am ever within sight of these people again. I am usually a very cordial and kind person, but these days, flat-out snubbing and ignoring narcissists and their flying monkeys has become second nature and brings me a little joy in the midst of the mountains of grief, rage, guilt, shame, and fear that knot my gut.

I am enjoying healing this complex tension and discordant energy in my body with counseling and using Reiki energy healing, which helps heal the root cause. It feels it takes a very long time to heal and that my wound is quite deep.

I want a clear, peaceful mind and emotions and it is extremely frustrating to see how many repressed emotions continue to arise–all linked to long-held tensions in my body., but I am seeing slow and steady progress using inner child healing. *sigh*

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London-based science and technology journalist, writer, video producer, health and psychology blogger, Czech voice-over artist, English - Czech translator and transcreator. I have a bachelor's degree in journalism from Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic, master's in cultural anthropology also from Charles University and another master's in science from the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.